"Well then, everyone. It seems we have some decisions to make."
Carson stood before the group as they contemplated Tamira's words. Many of the players were, understandably, thinking about the last statement she made.
One murder and you wouldn't have to worry about that day's Activity Points quota. How terribly simple.
[What a joke.]
"Before we talk about anything else, I should make it clear that there's likely no need to ever fight each other." The person who had just said that was a woman wearing pristine, white armor, with flowing blonde hair falling down her back like a golden cape.
Neve knew of her. Her name was Stella. She was a level 30 high-ranking member of the Valkyries.
"As the snake said, there are going to be dungeons and monsters around us that we can clear for Activity Points before doing the main dungeon. We can just do that, alright? It'll be okay."
"She's right. Obviously, these sick fucks are trying to get us to fight each other," Carson declared. "We're just a source of entertainment for them, understand? They want this expedition to fail, so they're trying to get us to self-sabotage. Don't let the lies they spew get to your heads."
"Well," another man walked forward. This one had silky black hair and a gaunt face with a lanky body. This guy was from the Bloodletters, judging by his fancy, crimson armor. He was level 32. "That's easy for us to say."
"What?" Carson was confused, as was Neve.
"We're strong!" The man stated, loudly and proudly. "If we're lacking in Activity Points, it would be easy for us to take advantage of the weaklings here, right?"
Instantly, the group began yelling at him and shouting.
"What are you getting at, Allen?" Carson asked.
Allen smiled, putting his hands up defensively.
"I meant the exact opposite of what a lot of you understood. See, because we are all strong and we can take advantage of the more pathetic amongst us, we need to put safeguards in to protect them."
The group noticeably calmed down upon hearing that. Allen continued.
"We should separate the highest level people here from the weakest. That way, if anyone gets any weird ideas, at least they'll have to fight other people their own size to act on them. What do you think about that?" He asked the crowd at large.
"I-I think that makes sense," a girl replied quietly. One by one, many others began voicing the same opinion.
Neve wasn't too sure, however. Mainly, for one reason:
[Separating all of the strong fighters from the weak ones makes it so they can't take advantage of them, but it also makes it so that the good guys won't be able to protect anyone. If someone does decide to start killing people, it'll be a bloodbath.]
In this place, however, maybe protection was too much to ask for.
"Agreed then," John Dulan, the level 41 Golden Dragons representative, said. "How about we do this? Everyone who is level 20 or lower, move to the left. Everyone who's above level 20, move to the right."
Following his instructions, the players did just that. Neve, who was on that exact limit, followed the vast majority of the other players in moving to the left. Around a quarter of them went to the right.
"This works," John stated. "We want there to be more players on the weaker side. Strength in numbers and all that."
"Guess we've got our camps!" Carson declared. "Everyone on the left, pick people to represent your side. We'll have meetings at the start of every day to decide what we'll do. Everything will be kept completely democratic. Our lives are on the line here, so no one should be forced to do anything they don't want to."
Honestly, Neve was pleasantly surprised by the fact that everyone was trying to be reasonable, but she couldn't help but wonder what would happen later.
After all, all 900 other players who had come here before the current 100 had died. *Something* happened to them, and it didn't take much brain power to figure out that, maybe, the fact that they were incentivized to kill each other had something to do with it.
That alone was probably not entirely to blame for their deaths, but it was probably still relevant.
"While you guys are picking your representatives, we'll set up our cameras. Having some access to the outside world might be good." Carson said.
"They might not work properly," John said. "The other groups probably tried to bring cameras too, but we never saw what the inside of this place looked like until now. Something must be off about this place."
"We won't know what until we try though, right?" Carson asked. "Let's give it a shot."
And so, the highest-level players all walked away, leaving everyone at level 20 or under behind.
"Are our World Shop tokens…? Yes!" A man cheered behind Neve. She glanced over at him. "They're still here!"
Neve quickly checked her status and found that, indeed, her WS tokens had remained.
[Well, at least we still have those. We won't be starving to death today.]
"Ah… So, that's why."
It was Carson's voice that caught Neve's attention this time. She glanced over at the man, who stood several meters away.
"What are you talking about?" John asked.
"Check the price of internet service on the World Shop."
John did as he asked and, curious, Neve did the same.
She opened the screen for the World Shop and went into the Misc. tab. Here, she found internet service as the top option.
And… yes, its price was disheartening.
"One hundred thousand tokens? What the fuck!?"
100000 tokens. That was the price of having access to the outside world, given that they couldn't come back the way they came in.
"Tents, beds, mats, and such are cheap, though. I've got enough for almost everyone here," Carson stated.
As they sorted that situation out, the lower-level side of the group began talking amongst themselves. Because she was part of that group, Neve went to join them.
"I have to be honest with you, I'm glad we split up from them," one of the boys said. "Would be kinda scary having those guys looking over our shoulders every night with the whole Activity Points stuff."
"Yeah… Even though he pitched the separation, I didn't like how Allen was looking at us… creeped me out," a girl echoed her agreement.
Neve chose to remain silent, of course. Not only because she had very little idea what they should do, but because she didn't really care.
This whole thing was just her excuse to die, after all.
Apparently, the group disagreed.
"So, who are we picking as our representatives?" A man covered from head to toe in steel armor asked.
"We should pick our strongest, right?" The same girl from before asked. "Everyone who's level 20… or anyone close to that."
Neve was, admittedly, spaced out when they said this. It wasn't until the eyes of over forty different people shifted to her that she realized she had just become the focus of the conversation.
"W-Wait, what?"
"You're level 20," a girl stated helpfully. "You're the strongest one here."
"I-I, but…" Neve raised her hands, taking a step back.
This wasn't what she signed up for. Her entire goal was running into a dungeon she was too weak to handle and going out in a blaze of healing glory.
And now people were asking her… to speak!?
"I.... don't..... think... I...…"
Her mind was short-circuiting.
The players were having absolutely none of it, though.
"They won't listen to our level 1 asses," a guy told her. "It sucks that you're just a healer, but still. It has to be you."
Over the course of a few sentences, Neve had completely run out of energy.
"… Sure."
And that was how she ended up as the representative of the low-levels.
Great.
---
Neve had never felt quite as out of place as she did right now.
Currently, she was in a massive tent, sitting at a roundtable surrounded by some of the biggest names in Starlight City.
John Dulan, Carson Grey, Allen Black, Stella Bellanova, Jeanne Villeneuve, Father Uriel, and a few others whose names she did not know, but whose armor shined just as brilliantly, sat around her.
Level 41, level 36, level 32, level 30, and so on. Over the course of the year that the Unity Trials had been a thing, these players had become household names in the new world. Their deeds had been clipped and viewed millions of times online. Their luxurious homes and properties nearly made it seem like the entire world hadn't actually ended.
And now, Neve was sitting between them, with their eyes fixed on her.
[Kill me.]
"So, ehm…" Carson began, speaking far more quietly than he had at any point up until now. "Neve, was it?"
"Y-Yeah."
"Right. We need to take a moment to tell you something before we start."
"Uh, okay," Neve nodded. "What is it?"
"Take a second and look at your map."
Quickly, Neve followed that order. On her HUD, she clicked on the map and brought it up in front of her. It showed her current position at the western point of a vast landmass. In her general vicinity were a few red skull markers.
"Click on one of the skulls."
"Okay…" She did just that and found the following indicator:
{Players:}
{0/4}
"Huh? That's…"
"Exactly as you think. It's a limiter on how many players can attempt that dungeon," Carson said. "Now, go and count how many skull markers there are on the map."
Neve was already doing that before he even asked. She caught on to what he was trying to say quickly.
"Ten."
"In this area, yes," Carson nodded. "We can't see how many of them there are in other places. But, here, these are the ones we have available to us. We also have no idea how big this continent, or island, or whatever, actually is. So, these may be the only dungeons we can reasonably head out to for the foreseeable future. And, unfortunately, we also don't know whether you can re-try a dungeon with different players. All of that means…"
"Some people are going to be guaranteed to miss the quota," Neve murmured.
"Exactly," Allen said, putting his hands behind his head and putting his feet up on the table. "Some people are going to get fucked. Unless…"
[Ah... Fuck. I see where this is going.]
"Unless we try to do the main dungeon ASAP," Neve said, sounding defeated.
"You catch on fast," Stella said, her arms crossed over her chest with a stern look on her face. "We won't know for sure until we visit one of these dungeons, but it's looking like there will be some people who get punished early on for not meeting the quota."
"Once that begins to happen, and the fear of being punished sets in, that is when our camp will turn into a free-for-all," Father Uriel, representative of the Church's Guild, stated.
"Yeah, I… I think I understand."
It became apparent that the truth was that these moments, right now, were likely to be the most peaceful of the whole journey. The reason was that the moment people started getting punished, their inhibitions would go out the window.
The only reason people weren't killing each other for Activity Points right now was that there was a tiny moral voice in the back of their minds telling them not to do that.
By midnight, that voice could be gone entirely and all that would be left would be the need to survive.
"We need to form some sort of a plan to… mitigate the damage, at least," Carson said.
"Personally, I think it would be best to just let them fight it out," Allen shrugged.
"Why?" Stella asked, glaring at him before she even heard his answer.
"This challenge is bigger than any of us," Allen argued. His eyes were closed, and he had a smirk on his face, with his hands still behind his head. "We *need* to succeed in clearing the main dungeon. Not just to get out of here alive, but so that humanity can have the 10 years it needs to adjust to life in this new world. And, personally, I think letting them fight it out would be the best way of determining who exactly on their side would be useful to us."
"I can't believe this is coming from you," Stella responded. "You were the one who talked about safeguards! Protecting the weak from the strong!"
"And I still believe in that," Allen replied. "I didn't say we should do them any harm. I think they should fight it out amongst themselves."
"I agree."
Those two words came from Father Uriel. The religious leader's response stunned many of the people sitting at the roundtable.
"Why's that?" Carson asked.
"I believe God has provided us with a way of determining who exactly he favors. Let them battle and may those who come out on top prove themselves as God's chosen for this task."
"I don't really give a shit about any of that, but glad to see you're on my side!" Allen cackled.
Everyone at the roundtable went silent for a moment. Allen hummed a little song to himself while the others contemplated what exactly they should do.
Carson looked over at Neve and asked:
"Well, we brought you in here for a reason, Neve. You are the representative of that group. They picked you out to be their voice. What do you think about this situation?"
Neve looked down at her own lap.
Staring in the face of overwhelmingly bad odds of survival had a way of easing her awkwardness. She couldn't bring herself to care as much about the collective prestige of those gathered around her right now.
"Well, I'm thinking that even though I'm a virgin, I've finally learned what it's like to get fucked. I guess I have to take my wins where I can get them."
She gave them an awkward chuckle and, it seemed like her words paradoxically helped lighten the mood.
"Indeed," Carson said in between rough giggles.
"Small victories, I suppose," Allen said with a smile as well.
Stella just gave Neve a sadder kind of smile before the girl kept going.
"Um… let me ask something first. T-Tamira? Are you there?"
Instantly, the snake appeared before her.
"Yessss," she hissed happily. "I am pleased to see that you've called me~ What can I do for you? Oh, and you can talk to me telepathically. Use your thoughts if you wish. The others do not need to listen."
"Uh, okay…"
[… If I did that right now, that would be a really easy way of squandering trust. And, right now, trust is a resource. Trust might be what keeps me from getting killed in a day or two.]
Noting that Neve asked the following out loud:
"How far is the main dungeon from here? On foot, I mean."
"Oh, around a twelve-hour walk," the snake said. "It was placed closer to the entrance than many other dungeons, just in case you wanted to tackle it early."
"I see…"
[It's 11:12 am right now. We'd get there just before the day ended if we started walking right now.]
"Anything else, or was that all you wanted to know?"
The way Tamira said that almost sounded like a test. As though she wanted Neve to ask something else. Something specific.
Neve hated that. It really made her feel like she was just some piece on a chessboard, being toyed with.
Still, she knew what she wanted to ask next.
"Can the punishment system force you out of a dungeon?"
The snake giggled.
[That's the question she was looking for, I guess.]
"I like you," a voice suddenly spoke within Neve's mind. It was that snake's, but almost like it had been given a heavy dose of reverb. "Your mind is quick. Humans like you tend to be the most entertaining in the Final Challenge. I look forward to seeing your progress in the weeks to come."
That quick mind of hers allowed her to catch onto the implication Tamira made instantly.
["The weeks to come." So, she thinks that whatever strategy we end up thinking of isn't going to work. Or maybe it's going to take that long to clear the main dungeon? Is it because we're on the wrong track? Maybe there's something specific we need to do and we're being misled into not doing it. Whatever. Right now, I can't really think about that sort of thing. We only have 12 hours till midnight, after all.]
"So, the answer's no?" Neve asked out loud. The snake nodded.
"Once a player enters a dungeon, they will remain there until they either die or the dungeon is completed. If they complete it, and doing so would give them enough Activity Points to save themselves from being punished the previous night, then those Activity Points will go toward the quota. Call on me whenever you wish."
She left, perhaps knowing that Neve wouldn't have anything else to ask of her. That information was all she needed.
"Um, one more thing, hold on."
Before she could tell them what she was thinking, she needed to check one last little detail. She put her map in front of her and hovered over the main dungeon's marker.
That confirmed what she suspected.
"Okay, so…" Neve looked at the others. "I… have some thoughts."
"Enlighten us," Allen said.
"So uh, obviously, they want us to kill each other. That's clear. There's one way, and uh, *only* one way, as far as I can tell, that nobody has to kill anyone. Can you guys look at the main dungeon's marker?"
The other players did that. As they did, Neve continued:
"I'd bet that the main dungeon is the only one that doesn't have a limit on how many players can go in. So, the only way we can avoid any punishments at all is if we go and try it right now." Neve exhaled deeply. "That's why the enemies there scale with our levels. That's why the portal opened at the time that it did. That's why our Activity Points were taken away at the start. That's why Tamira put murder in the players' minds."
She lifted her head to look at everyone around her. She didn't need to say it, but she did anyway, just so it could be out in the open.
"It's because everything, literally everything, about this place is meant to make us want to take the main dungeon on. And, if you care about the lives of the players, then, there's no real choice. That's just what we have to do... That's what I think, anyway."